Russian President Vladimir Putin’s consistent claims that Ukraine is preparing to use biological and chemical weapons could be an indication of a future Russian attack with similar weapons, President Joe Biden said.
Biden said Monday that Putin’s claims about Ukraine possessing biological and chemical weapons were false and could be used as cover for a strike of Putin’s own.
“Now he’s talking about new false flags he’s setting up, including asserting that we in America have biological, as well as chemical, weapons in Europe, simply not true,” Biden said Monday. “They are also suggesting that Ukraine has biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine. That’s a clear sign he’s considering using both of those.”
Prior to Russia’s invasion late last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested Russia might have been preparing to use chemical weapons as a pretext to invade.
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“Russia plans to manufacture a pretext for its attack,” Blinken said. “It could be a fabricated so-called terrorist bombing inside Russia, the invented discovery of a mass grave, a staged drone strike against civilians, or a fake, even a real, attack using chemical weapons.”
Russia has used chemical weapons in the past, as recently as 2013 in Syria. The White House has been sounding the alarm that Russia could be preparing to use them again and has promised “severe” retaliation if Russian forces do so.
“I’m not going to speak about the intelligence,” Biden said earlier this month. “But Russia would pay a severe price if they use chemical weapons.”
In testimony before Congress last week, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency noted in a summary of a wide-ranging threat assessment that Russia “almost certainly maintains biological and chemical weapons programs, and Putin is not shy about using them.
Besides using chemical weapons on the battlefield in Syria, Russian agents have been linked to assassination attempts using Novichok, a nerve agent, in London in 2018 and inside Russia in 2020.
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As Russia’s war effort has moved along at a snail’s pace, there is some concern that a stepped-up strike would hasten the process of achieving objectives.
“Despite greater than anticipated resistance from Ukraine and relatively high losses in the initial phases of the conflict, Moscow appears determined to press forward by using more lethal capabilities until the Ukrainian government is willing to come to terms favorable to Moscow,” Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier wrote. “Stiff Ukrainian resistance is leading Russia to resort to more indiscriminate methods that are destroying cities, infrastructure, and increasing civilian deaths.”
